ODC/Dance Presents: Summer Sampler

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ODC/Dance Presents: Summer Sampler

July 20 - 22, 2023

Savor the sweetness of summer with a taste of ODC/Dance. Experience the newly premiered and critically acclaimed Collision, Collapse and a Coda by Founding Artistic Director Brenda Way, ODC/Dance Associate Choreographer Kimi Okada and Way’s deeply intimate May’s Letters, as well as new works premiered by guest choreographers Dexandro Montalvo and Sonya Delwaide

 

Discounted Tickets

Have a night out with friends at Summer Sampler! ODC is offering a group discount of 10% off orders of 6+ tickets. Use code ‘ODC10’ at checkout.

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About the Work

  • Collision, Collapse and a Coda by Brenda Way

    Collision, Collapse and a Coda delivers a rousing response to the daily barrage of news, disasters and disruptive events, and the solace we find in the care and affection of intimate relationships. Collision, Collapse and a Coda premiered at ODC/Dance presents: Dance Downtown 2023 and is hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as work that "brims with movement that marries ferocity to precision.”

  • May’s Letters by Kimi Okada and Brenda Way

    May's Letters, choreographed by ODC/Dance Associate Choreographer Kimi Okada and ODC Founding Artistic Director Brenda Way, is an intimate portrayal of Okada’s parent's life as newlyweds. They were detained in a Japanese American incarceration camp, where Okada's mother, May, wrote letters that are read aloud as part of the score. Through this work, Okada conveys a deeply personal narrative filled with tales of bleak conditions, indomitable spirit, and also love, humor, and grace. 

    Of May’s Letters Okada says, “Her letters surface the timely issue of how we cope with the injustices of racism and the confines of imprisonment. While the piece explores the question of how one responds to a national betrayal, it is ultimately about the power of community that allows each person to find a path to resilience.”

  • Interconnected Humanity by Dexandro Montalvo

    Dexandro Montalvo’s newest work, premiering at this year’s Summer Sampler, is a sextet set to ambient music by film score composer Cliff Martinez. The work, in Montalvo’s words, “explores the intricate interplay of human relationships with an eye to the forces that bring people together or cause them to drift apart.”

  • C’est frette! by Sonya Delwaide

    Sonya Delwaide’s newest work, premiering at this year’s Summer Sampler, is a sextet set to Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F minor. “With a playful nod to San Francisco’s famously cold summers, the piece asks audiences to experience winter in Québec while right in the middle of summer,” said Delwaide. “Wherever you go, people love to talk about the weather. In its hardships and unpredictability, it offers a shared platform for human connection.”

Choreographers

  • Brenda Way

    Headshot of Brenda Way

    Founder, Artistic Director

    Brenda Way received her early training at the School of American Ballet and Ballet Arts in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of ODC/Dance and creator of the ODC Theater and ODC Dance Commons, community performance and training venues in San Francisco’s Mission District. She launched ODC and helped create an inter-arts department at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in the late 1960's before relocating to the Bay Area in 1976.

    Brenda has choreographed more than 85 pieces over the last 45 years. Her commissions include Unintended Consequences: A Meditation (2008) Equal Justice Society; Life is a House (2008) San Francisco Girls Chorus; On a Train Heading South (2005) CSU Monterey Bay; Remnants of Song (2002) Stanford Lively Arts; Scissors Paper Stone (1994) Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Western Women (1993) Cal Performances, Rutgers University and Jacob's Pillow; Ghosts of an Old Ceremony (1991) Walker Art Center and The Minnesota Orchestra; Krazy Kat (1990) San Francisco Ballet; This Point in Time (1987) Oakland Ballet; Tamina (1986) San Francisco Performances; and Invisible Cities (1985) Stanford Lively Arts and the Robotics Research Laboratory. Her work Investigating Grace was named an NEA American Masterpiece in 2011.

  • Kimi Okada

    Headshot of Kimi Okada

    KIMI OKADA (Associate Choreographer, Director of ODC School)is a founding member of ODC. Her work includes more than 26 choreographed works for ODC/Dance, as well as commissions and collaborations with Geoff Hoyle, Bill Irwin, Julie Taymor, and Robin Williams. She has choreographed productions for the American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco, Yale Repertory Theater, the New Victory Theater in New York, the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, Theatre for a New Audience in New York, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the American Music Theater Festival, the Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Pickle Family Circus, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

    She was nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway production of Largely New York, which she co-choreographed with Bill Irwin. She received a 2014 Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Choreography for ODC’s Two If by Sea.

    Since 1996, Kimi has served as director of the ODC School, which she has brought to the forefront of international and national dance education for youth and adults. She has been honored with a California State Legislature Assembly Resolution for choreographic and community contributions. She also directs one of ODC’s teen companies, the Dance Jam.

     

  • Dexandro Montalvo

    Black and white headshot of Dexandro Montalvo

    Born and raised in New York, Montalvo is a San Francisco based director, choreographer, dancer, and dance educator. A professional dancer with Robert Moses Kin and various other companies for over 6 seasons, his choreographic commissions include works for RMK, Liss Fain Dance Company, LINES Ballet Training Program/Summer Program, The Black Eyed Peas, DanceWorks Chicago, MINI (USA), Mini Amp Live, SF Ballet School, Concept o4, Dance Mission’s Dance Brigade, Sleepy Hollow Performing Arts Center, Cardinal Ballet, University of SF Dance Ensemble, Marin School of the Arts, & the ODC Dance Jam. Montalvo and his choreography have appeared on the MTV, BET, Telemundo and Fox networks. Montalvo is a past Artistic Director of the Dance Theatre of San Francisco (in his tenure DTSF won two of the four Isadora Duncan award nominations including “Outstanding Choreography” for his ballet, “Pent”). Additionally, he was awarded a 2019 Saint Louis Inner Circle Award for “Such Sweet Thunder”, won an Izzie Award for his choreography in “Art Behind Bars” in 2014 and was nominated for another with “Impluse” in 2015 (RMK commission).

    As a dance educator, Montalvo currently teaches at SF Ballet, USF, Dominican University of California (LINES BFA Program), LINES Ballet Training Program & ODC Dance Commons. Dexandro also serves as Assistant Director and Rehearsal Master of ODC’s pre-professional teen company. He has also taught at many other schools including Stanford University, SUNY Purchase College and Sleepy Hollow Performing Arts Center. Montalvo holds a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase College.
     

    Photo by Andrea Basil

  • Sonya Delwaide

    Sonya Delwaide is a choreographer and performer whose reputation has flourished within the United States and Canada for three decades. Her work has been favorably noticed by critics: she has been profiled in San Francisco Magazine, received a Bay Area Goldie Award (from the San Francisco Bay Guardian), was named in the 2001 Top 10 list from the San Francisco Chronicle and was in the Dance Magazine’s Top 25 people to watch in 2002. Although her choreographic development began within the New York post-modern dance scene, her regular involvement with ballet companies and her French-Canadian roots strongly influence her voice. The San Francisco Express wrote: "she seems to epitomize a postmodern fusion of the Balanchine/Cunningham aesthetic with the punk expressiveness of the '80s-geometric clarity and a ruminating, personal, sexually prickly style". Ms. Delwaide's work is characterized by intense theatricality, a highly charged and imaginative movement vocabulary, and an ironic yet gentle fascination with the human condition.

Special Events

Lobby Talk
Friday July 21, 2023
6:30PM
ODC Theater Lobby

Join us in the ODC Theater Lobby prior to the performances on Friday July 21, 2023 for an intimate "Lobby Talk" with ODC's Founding Artistic Director Brenda Way and ODC Associate Choreographer Kimi Okada. Learn about the artistic process behind Way's critically acclaimed Collision, Collapse, and a Coda and Okada's deeply personal May's Letters. This is a unique opportunity to meet the choreographers and learn more about the process behind creating world class dance.

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LGBTQIA+ Night
Saturday, July 22, 2023

More details to come! 

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